A new chapter in men's vanity
Rob Price

If you were to step inside an upstairs bedroom of my home, you would learn something about me.

I don't mean anything unusual. Or illegal. Or anything that would make you run screaming from the premises, as if you'd just discovered the dark secret inside the Bates Motel. No, all you would discover is a closet of full of men's ties.

They are all the ties I have since I was a teenager - possibly hundreds - and they come in a wide variety of styles that reflect about 35 years of fashion in men's dress wear.

A couple of the ties go back to my college days: A knit dark blue number I could wear with just about anything; a green plaid number I used to wear with a green corduroy suit - you don't see many of those anymore. Then there are the socallled power ties, a style that became popular during the 1980s, when Wall Street investment bankers became arbiters not only of arbitrage, but good taste. They're made of good silk and generally feature small paisley designs. There are also ties that show off one large paisley pattern; I remember buying those toward the end of the 1980s, after deciding the time had come for a bigger, bolder statement. There are bow ties - a nod to my father, who as a physician wore nothing but bow ties because he didn't like the way regular ties fell into his patients' faces. Finally, there are the ties that reflect my evolving conservative nature, represented most succinctly by the navy blue tie with tiny white polka dots I bought around 1996, the same year I voted for Bob Dole on the sensible grounds I suspected Bill Clinton's second term would be dogged by too many legal hassles. I was right about Clinton, and the tie is an allpurpose article for nearly any occasion.

I just spent a pleasant hour going through my ties, after reading an article in the New York Times that announced men's neckties are back in fashion since falling out of style when "casual Fridays" became part of the weekly office scene.

I'm afraid I have been part of this changing scene. For years, as a reporter, I usually wore a tie to work, and during a two-year stint in the public relations business I wore a tie to work every day. But more recently, as editor of The Courier-Advocate, I've been dressing more casually. The Village of Bath is a fairly casual place to work. Male lawyers wear ties for the most part; some of the higherlevel male employees in the county office building wear ties. But in general, most working men wear neat, casual clothes. If I put on a tie, it's usually just because I feel like dressing up.

That may all be changing. According to the Times article, tie sales to men between 18 and 34 are up 13 percent over the past year. Moreover, the new generation of men's ties reflect a new post-formal style. Instead of silk with a restrained paisley or polka-dot, the ties may be made of wool, cashmere, silk knit or leather.

"The youthful tie is giving the old dress code a much-need shot in the neck," the Times reported. And this is great news for those of us who are secret tie hounds: Now I can ask my wife for a cashmere tie for Christmas.

Apart from bow ties, which make a curious fashion statement all their own, the mainstream long tie extends from the center of one's neck to a point somewhere in the vicinity of the belt buckle. It performs the important role of properly holding together the collar of a dress shirt, which otherwise would flop open and get stuck under the lapels of one's jacket. The tie is also an adornment and a sign of male vanity. Men who wear ties generally enjoy flipping through them, finding the right tie that suits both the dress jacket and shirt, the particular occasion (wedding? funeral?) for dressing up, and the mood of the moment.

If men's ties are coming back, it could signal a new era of formal dress. My own hunch, however, is that it signals a new era of male vanity.

So, where's that old yellow tie with the blue polka dots? And would it be available in cashmere?